20th Century
Since the early 20th century, a number of books and articles have documented the flat earth error as one of a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages. The misconception has had no currency in historical scholarship since at least 1920, but it persisted in popular culture and in some school textbooks into the 1960s. Both E.M.W. Tillyard's book The Elizabethan World Picture and C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image are devoted to a broad survey of how the universe was viewed in Renaissance and medieval times, and both extensively discuss how the educated classes knew the world was round. Lewis draws attention to the fact that in Dante's The Divine Comedy about an epic voyage through hell, purgatory, and heaven, the earth is spherical with gravity being towards the center of the earth. As the devil is frozen in a block of ice in the center of the earth, Dante and Virgil climb down the devil's torso, but up from the devil's waist to his feet, as his waist is at the center of the earth.
An American schoolbook by Emma Miller Bolenius published in 1919 has this introduction to the suggested reading for Columbus Day (12 October):
When Columbus lived, people thought that the earth was flat. They believed the Atlantic Ocean to be filled with monsters large enough to devour their ships, and with fearful waterfalls over which their frail vessels would plunge to destruction. Columbus had to fight these foolish beliefs in order to get men to sail with him. He felt sure the earth was round.Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors ... grew increasingly mutinous...because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known. The 1937 popular song, They All Laughed contains the couplet "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round". In the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon Hare We Go (1951) Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand the Catholic quarrel about the shape of the earth. The king states the earth is flat. In Walt Disney's 1963 animation The Sword in the Stone, wizard Merlin (who has traveled into the future) explains to his apprentice that "One day they will discover that the earth is round". Jeffrey Burton Russell rebutted the prevalence of belief in the flat earth in the monograph 1991 and the paper 1997. Louise Bishop (2008) states that virtually every thinker and writer of the 1000-year medieval period affirmed the spherical shape of the earth.
Read more about this topic: Myth Of The Flat Earth, History
Famous quotes containing the word century:
“In the race for wealth, a neighbor tries to outdo his neighbor, but this strife is good for men. For the potter envies potter, and the carpenter the carpenter, and the beggar rivals the beggar, and the singer the singer.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)